2) i want to download podcasts etc. like mad while surfing, and/or visiting/responding to forum boards (possibly several at a time), and/or watching videos and/or as well as doing other tasks. ALL SIMULTANEOUSLY. And i want instantaneous response and upmost speed.

3) No game playing, special video capability or special audio capability needed.

4) Don't need monitor, mouse or keyboard.

5) Discuss the possibility of upgrading/improving/modifying the present one if this is a viable alternative.

I am not a PC expert by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I see and use the computer for, if you don't have a great internet server, you are shoveling quicksand.

I have a laptop I use for work, minimal programs installed. It's about 5 times faster than our home PC, but the home PC is loaded with programs my wife just can't live without. Watch for sales, they should be coming up now until a few weeks after the new year.

__________________
"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." - Mark Twain

2) i want to download podcasts etc. like mad while surfing, and/or visiting/responding to forum boards (possibly several at a time), and/or watching videos and/or as well as doing other tasks. ALL SIMULTANEOUSLY. And i want instantaneous response and upmost speed.

3) No game playing, special video capability or special audio capability needed.

4) Don't need monitor, mouse or keyboard.

5) Discuss the possibility of upgrading/improving/modifying the present one if this is a viable alternative.

If money is no object I would go to a boutique computer builder such as V3 Gaming and have them build your computer for you. I did, and I've never been this happy with the computer ever. I am not a gamer nor will I ever be. I do however have a solid-state video camera that creates huge files. Video editing software brought my old computer to its knees. In fact I'm not even typing this rather using voice recognition software and it is immediate. I would have a computer built with two solid-state hard drives running in a raid zero configuration. My computer was overclocked to 5 GHz and uses water cooling for the CPU.

I tell you Bob, if I ever get into your neck of the woods, that's 3 toys I want to see now! Your T, your Caddy, and now your computer. I never knew there was a water cooled CPU! That's a speed I don't know anything about. Dan

__________________
"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." - Mark Twain

No problem I go through your neck of the woods on a fairly regular basis. The watercooled CPU is getting pretty common amongst the heavy-duty gamers. This was the first time I splurged on a computer build, and I'm not regretting one second of it. By the way all this typing I'm not doing, I installed voice recognition software and it is working beautifully. I started it last night took about an hour for the software to teach me how to in turn teach the computer to recognize my voice. Total of two hours and then I was out here terrorizing the forms. The more I use this voice recognition software, the more it gets dialed into my voice and fluctuations. Last night after installing it, it made two or three mistakes for every hundred words I typed. Today different story, it is just not making any mistakes.

i have been seeing the voice activated tv comercials and wondered how well they work
what band do you have deck?

Matt,

I am using the Dragon naturally speaking voice recognition software. It took about two hours to set up, one hour to teach me how to teach the computer my voice, then another hour for the computer to learn my voice. I got this task finished about 2 AM this morning, played with it until about 4 AM, and went to bed. Today, it has been almost free of any kind of mistakes. The more you use it the better it gets in recognizing your voice. Since there are so many words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings, it is best to get into the habit of speaking in full and complete sentences. The reason for this, is the software has a lot of intelligence and it can tell by how the sentence was constructed what word you meant to say even though another word would been spelled differently but have the same sound. All the above came out just the way I said it.

When you look at a spec sheet for a computer, you will see two things in particular - ROM and RAM.

So, let's pretend for a second that your PC is your truck. The RAM would be the size/hp of the engine and the ROM would be the size or carrying capacity of the buck. In the real world, people love power, so always go for as much RAM or 'engine' as you can get. If you want to store lots of stuff like music or videos, you're gonna need a big buck (ROM).

There are also 'External Hard Drives' that you can add if you want. These would be like hitching up a trailer. Is this making sense?

A computer with say 4 Gigabytes of RAM and a 500 Gigabyte hard drive (ROM) is sufficient to do the things you want. 4GB RAM is the minimum that a lot of online games require in order to play. That's what I have, although I don't use mine for gaming. I just like the pages to open quick when I'm on the internet.

I'll go the "budget" route since I just built a new one myself a couple weeks ago. I'm a bit like you and Deckofficer since I wanted some decent speed for doing video and graphics work (I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Premiere). My target was $500 but I went over that a bit at $570 (including all shipping and taxes).

BTW, even if you are not a computer whiz, you can build your own system without much trouble. There are great videos on line and a ton of web sites to walk you through the process. It's not like the old days when we used to tear our hair out building our own computers. Today most of the parts and pieces can be integrated pretty easily and drivers are pretty well taken care of by Windows.

might check out star surplus, i think in ca. they have customer service & will help with what is compatable with what. Main thing is less soft ware is better, no screen saver, clean disk every day if on line at all. lots of memeory, hot processor, multi gig hard drives!

Thanks everyone for responding----i'm extremely busy at work (have to pay for it somehow) and will have more time to discuss over the weekend.

I must apologize for my previous reply because I honestly thought you were kidding about your requirements when I read #2, 3 and 4. For some reason, your requirements read to me as if you wanted the computer to do all those things, but without the use of a monitor, keyboard and mouse. It has now occurred to me that what you meant was that you already have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

Again sorry for the misunderstanding as I was not trying to poke fun in any way, and my apologies to you and fellow members. I hope I did not offend you.

When you look at a spec sheet for a computer, you will see two things in particular - ROM and RAM.

So, let's pretend for a second that your PC is your truck. The RAM would be the size/hp of the engine and the ROM would be the size or carrying capacity of the buck. In the real world, people love power, so always go for as much RAM or 'engine' as you can get. If you want to store lots of stuff like music or videos, you're gonna need a big buck (ROM).

There are also 'External Hard Drives' that you can add if you want. These would be like hitching up a trailer. Is this making sense?

A computer with say 4 Gigabytes of RAM and a 500 Gigabyte hard drive (ROM) is sufficient to do the things you want. 4GB RAM is the minimum that a lot of online games require in order to play. That's what I have, although I don't use mine for gaming. I just like the pages to open quick when I'm on the internet.

i love this explanation ram=motor and the rom=p-up bed

so then how would you describe the processor?
how many things the driver of the truck can operate at once?
steering, shifting, tuning radio, all while drinking a cup of coffee ?

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